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Biden vs. Ryan: No Shy People Onstage

WASHINGTON — It was the Young Gun against the Old Hand, the reformer ready to turn the page on an aging social compact that dates to the New Deal jousting with the veteran — alive for much of that compact’s construction — defending the tried and true.

How much change American voters are ready for may determine whom they side with in the days to come, Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, or the current vice president seeking another term, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

The lively, sometimes fiery vice-presidential debate Thursday night delineated battle lines that had been blurred when the men at the top of the ticket, President Obama and Mitt Romney, met a week ago. But for all the substance of the debate, the verdict among voters might ultimately hinge on their reactions to the very different demeanor of the two men on stage.

As Mr. Ryan spoke, Mr. Biden sometimes grinned, sometimes smirked and often shook his head with disdain and dismissiveness toward Mr. Ryan, who he seemed to consider very much his junior adversary.

To some and particularly his party’s combative liberal base, Mr. Biden’s aggressiveness might have appeared both appropriate and overdue given Mr. Obama’s more timid performance last week. Certainly his big personality came through, for better or worse, and he made sure to underscore his deep experience, citing his presence during big moments in the Reagan years.

Others could view Mr. Biden’s performance as condescending or, as some Republicans tried to cast it, over the top and unworthy of his office.

If Mr. Biden was sometimes openly emotional, a hot on-screen presence, Mr. Ryan, 27 years his junior, was cooler, often coming off as confident, and fluent in the policy underlying his arguments. But at times he appeared flummoxed by Mr. Biden’s aggressiveness and at moments was rendered speechless by the vice president’s tactics.

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Vice-Presidential Debate Highlights

On critical issues, Mr. Ryan did not shy from his and his party’s plans to fundamentally alter Medicare. And while Mr. Romney had played down the benefit of the ticket’s tax plan for the wealthy, his running mate fell back on Republican orthodoxy, defending “small businesses” and rich households from what he suggested was the rapacious reach of President Obama.

While he often sounded like the budget committee chairman he is, Mr. Ryan worked to match Mr. Biden in bringing a personal dimension to his arguments, citing the role Medicare and Social Security played in helping his family after the death of his father.

“There aren’t enough rich people and small businesses to tax to pay for all their spending,” Mr. Ryan said. “And so the next time you hear them say, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll get a few wealthy people to pay their fair share,’ watch out, middle class. The tax bill is coming to you.”

Mr. Biden was equally steadfast, accusing Mr. Ryan of shifting a health care burden borne for decades by the government onto the elderly, and playing the populist on taxes.

“These guys haven’t been big on Medicare from the beginning,” Mr. Biden said, firmly wearing the hat of a Democrat raised in the glow of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“Who you believe?” he demanded in the shorthand of his hometown, Scranton, Pa. “Me, a guy who’s fought his whole life for this? Or somebody who had actually put in motion a plan that knowingly added $6,400 a year more to the cost of Medicare?”

It was inevitable that the vice-presidential debate would put a national spotlight on the ideas Mr. Ryan enshrined in two separate budget plans passed the last two years by the House of Representatives.

When he drafted them, Mr. Ryan foresaw the plans, the Roadmap for America in 2011 and the Path to Prosperity in 2012, as the ground on which Republicans would fight in the election.

“We need to say upfront, before the election, ‘Here is what we want to do,’ ” Mr. Ryan said in an interview in April. “If we win the election, then we have the moral authority and the obligation to actually do it, not win on some vague platitudes, ‘We’re not Barack Obama,’ then say, ‘O.K., here’s what we’re doing because we now have a mandate.’ ”

But since Mr. Romney named Mr. Ryan his running mate, that fight really has not materialized. Mr. Romney has not so much repudiated the Ryan budget as de-emphasized it, speaking vaguely of drafting his own plan if elected. He embraced Mr. Ryan’s prescriptions for Medicare in principle but not in detail. On taxes, Mr. Romney has adopted the direction of Mr. Ryan’s dictates — cuts to all tax rates, offset by unexplained loophole closures — but has not gone nearly as far.

Mr. Biden went to Danville, Ky., prepared to fight those ideas out. With his youth and his forthrightness, Mr. Ryan evokes conservative political change in a way Mr. Romney doesn’t. Side by side with Mr. Biden, decades older, a generational clash leapt from the television screen.

The budget plans did not come up in detail until the debate’s last moments, when Mr. Biden said: “The two budgets the congressman introduced have eviscerated all the things that the middle class cares about. It has knocked 19 — it will knock 19 million people off of Medicare. It will kick 200,000 children off of early education. It will eliminate the tax credit people have to be able to send their children to college. It cuts education by $450 billion. It does — it does virtually nothing, except continue to increase the tax cuts for the very wealthy.”

But their prescriptions, especially on entitlements, were the center of the stormiest engagements throughout the night.

“Medicare and Social Security are going bankrupt. These are indisputable facts,” Mr. Ryan said. “If you reform these programs for my generation, people 54 and below, you can guarantee they don’t change for people in or near retirement.”

The dispute was especially sharp over Medicare. Mr. Ryan and Mr. Romney have proposed the most fundamental change to the program since Lyndon Johnson created it. The government’s defined benefit, fee-for-service insurance system would be reshaped into a defined contribution system, much like guaranteed pensions have shifted to 401(k) plans. Each beneficiary would receive a fixed amount of money — Mr. Biden called it a “voucher” — to purchase private insurance or buy into the existing government program. The money, known as “premium support,” would rise each year by the growth of the economy, plus 0.5 percentage points, considerably slower than health care’s current rate of inflation.

Mr. Ryan’s belief is that competition would drive down the cost of health care, keeping the voucher’s value up to date. The Congressional Budget Office projected that the value of the voucher would erode, shifting as much as $6,400 a year more to seniors.

And Mr. Biden saw it as his job to stand and say no.

“We will not be part of any voucher plan,” he declared.

A version of this news analysis appears in print on October 12, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Fire This Time. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe